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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker
Life
March 2002
Why Did Quakers Stop Quaking?
By David Yount
My question is not of my own invention. It was a challenge posed to me in Summer 2000 when I gave the millennium lectures on religion at the Chautauqua Institution.
My challenger was a Pentecostal minister, who was annoyed at my characterization of contemporary faith in America as fuzzy, personal, emotional, and largely detached from the imperative to love God and serve one's neighbor. He argued that Quakers of George Fox's time were more like his own Pentecostals are today—fervent, emotional, evangelical, Christ-centered, empowered by the Spirit and devoted to mutual service. He was politely implying that we Friends have lost the fervor of our forebears.
I'm not good at thinking on my feet, but I believe the response that popped into my head that day was pretty good. I suggested to him that Quakers stopped quaking when we stopped being persecuted.
George Fox himself reveals why Quakers started quaking: "Justice Bennet of Derby was the first that called us Quakers, because I bid them tremble at the word of God."
In the centuries before Christianity became the official faith of the Roman Empire, it was persecution that kept the community of faith bound in love and service. But when the Romans stopped feeding Christians to the lions and became believers themselves, the Church became complacent, casual, complex and corrupt.
In just the first 10 years of George Fox's ministry some 60,000 men and women were converted to the restored faith, and Quaker missionaries risked death and imprisonment to persuade others to become Friends of the Truth. The first generations of Friends consciously took up the mission of the apostles and welcomed confrontation with church authorities to dramatize the difference between active faith and mere complacency.
They became renowned for truth-telling—something that did not endear them to their pious and self-satisfied contemporaries. The first generation of Quakers took our faith to Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Surinam, Turkey, the West Indies and the American colonies.
Our Quaker forebears quaked because the light shone on their sins and shortcomings, and they took seriously Jesus' command that we be "perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect." They called themselves Friends because Jesus told his followers, "You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you." John 15:15
It was not at all the early Quakers' purpose to establish an alternative to the church, but rather to purify the practice of religion. As Fox wrote, "None can make better than the pure undefiled religion, which was set up in the church in the apostles' days."
He and his followers intended to do no less than to convert the world to the restored faith. But today Fox's heirs have shrunk to fewer than 17,000 Quakers in all of Great Britain, and missionary work has virtually ceased. In the United States alone it has taken fully three and a half centuries to double the numbers that embraced the Quaker faith in its initial decade.
Allow me to express what we Friends call a "concern"—namely that our declining numbers may be attributed to a waning in our ability or willingness to articulate what we believe as Quakers, which in turn hampers our ability to witness to the truth.
Much as Friends treasure silent worship, it's worth pondering whether, over the years, many of us may have become too quiet for our own good, let alone for the good of those outside our fellowship. Expectant waiting is an invitation to God to reveal himself to us as a community. But silence in our meetings may reflect an unwillingness to commit ourselves to something more than lives of endless searching for inspiration.
It may be objected that our Quaker faith cannot be put into words—at least not into a formal creed. But the inner light reveals something, piercing through the darkness, and it must be the same something for all of us if we affirm a common faith as Friends of the Truth.
The early Quaker missionaries were required to articulate their faith in some detail; today we are not. I often wonder what you and I would say if we were required, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, to go door-to-door (as Jesus' disciples did) to share our faith with strangers and convince them of its truth.
I realize that our Quaker mantra is that we must wait expectantly to be led, but our Quaker forebears felt impelled to share their convincement. They quaked because they trembled at the word of God.
It is common among Friends today to pride ourselves on our lack of creed. But Fox had no hesitation in expressing his faith. His letter to Friends dated February 4, 1685, echoes the Apostles Creed. Quaker historian John Punshon notes "There are not many lights, but only one... . The doctrine of the light was a doctrine of the real presence of Christ... capable of generating the same power and conviction."
One-third of American Protestants claim to have had a "born-again" experience they describe as a saving encounter with Jesus, which led them to accept him as their personal Savior. Relatively few Quakers seek or will admit to such an experience. In its place we cherish a quiet mysticism. Unfortunately, many of us are unable or unwilling to share with one another what we have experienced of God's continuing revelation to us. Even when we're not feeling inspired at all, we still need to affirm a common faith that binds us together and denotes us as Friends of the Truth.
John Punshon is only one of many distinguished Friends who believe we have misplaced some of our original inspiration as a community. He notes "there are quarters where Christianity is seen as an option for Quakers as a matter of personal choice but in no sense part of the corporate testimony of our Society."
British Quaker Alistair Heron worries that "in 30 years' time the membership of the Society will need to be described by terms such as ethical, humanist, secular." He asks: "Are we a religious society or merely a friendly society?" and laments that "many of those regularly attending meeting for worship can do so for years without learning much about the Quaker heritage of faith."
In 1980, Joan Fitch, a fellow at Woodbrooke College in England, made "an attempt to find out why present-day Quakers seem unable to state our faith convincingly to the world, just at a time when it is desperately needed." She acknowledged that in meetings for worship "the main drift of what is said will be of a liberal, kindly, non-committal sentiment," then offered this mixed portrait: "How do I see the Society of Friends here and now? I see us as a small body: quiet, sober, respected, aging, middle-class, compassionate, incorruptible, usually liberal, but rarely radical."
In her 1997 Swarthmore Lecture Christine Trevett noted that increased liberalism and individualism among Friends had created a "culture of silence" in respect to articulating and transmitting Quaker faith and values. She writes, "I found myself asking myself more urgently whether Quakerism knew what it was."
I propose that we reaffirm the Quaker convictions that William James praised in his classic text, Varieties of Religious Experience, where he affirmed: "The Quaker religion which Fox founded... was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original Gospel truth than men had known..."
We need to affirm a faith that sustains us when the light of inspiration is dim and our lives are seemingly cloaked in darkness.
We need to encourage attenders to read and learn about our common heritage, and invite them to share the convincement we maintain even in the face of doubt. It is my experience that the many attenders in my own meeting are seeking solace, not faith and commitment. They come to us either wounded in their personal or professional lives or disillusioned by their experiences with other churches. Their testimony is sentimental, not religious. They are drawn to silence, seeking inspiration, not decision. It is not enough. We must help them to rebuild their lives on faith and commitment.
We need not only to seek the light for ourselves, but also to let our light shine before men, bearing witness to our faith.
Finally, we need to break our silence and shyness and return to that great Quaker practice of plain speaking, admitting the truth to ourselves, telling it to one another and sharing it with a world that would be better blessed if we could include it in one vast Society of Friends. Who knows? If we could manage that, we might start quaking again!
When I was taking questions after expressing these concerns in a lecture at Guilford College, a Quaker in his 80s gave this testimony. He said, "I know why I don't quake. I don't ask God the hard questions about what he requires me to do with my life. I'm afraid that if I ask him God will tell me something difficult that I'm unwilling to do. But if I was willing to listen to him, and do what he demands, then I'd start quaking."
David Yount of the Alexandria (Virginia) Monthly Meeting serves on the Ministry and Counsel Committee of Baltimore Yearly Meeting. His column, "Amazing Grace," is syndicated weekly to newspapers with a combined circulation of 25 million. His latest book, What Are We to Do? Living the Sermon on the Mount, is a main selection of the Spiritual Book Club.
Copyright (c) 2002 Friends United Meeting
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